It seems Remedy Entertainment (Max Payne, Alan Wake) is just as blown away as the rest of us by the startlingly lifelike facial animation that Team Bondi and Rockstar Games are implementing in L.A. Noire.Edgerecently toured Remedy’s HQ in Finland and it was during this visit that Remedy CEO Matias Myllyrinne stated that L.A. Noirehas “set a bar” for facial animation, later tweeting that it’s “the benchmark for emotional characters today.” Remedy apparently sees this as a challenge, because they’ve promised to raise that bar even higher with their next project.

Using technology created by lead animator John Root (who has previously held the same position at id and Epic Games), Remedy is able to use motion capture as the basis for producing scans of actors which are accurate to 0.5 millimetres. These scans include 64 facial poses, which Root claims can then be used to recreate every possible human expression. From there, animators are free to edit facial expressions in real time, without needing to rely solely on the actor’s performance for the animation. This isn’t all Remedy has up its sleeve, however – the studio also plans to implement colour mapping, technology that will simulate subdermal blood flow and adjust the colour of digital skin as it folds with each facial expression.

Did you get all that? Great. It sounds exceedingly impressive and everything, but there’s still one question left to ask Remedy: do you think you can top this?

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Well, that was decidedly anticlimactic. The case between Sony and PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz is over, with both sides reaching a settlement agreement. The exact details of that settlement are not being disclosed, but Sony has won a “permanent injunction” against Hotz.

The case was settled on 31 March, and both sides are happy with the outcome. According to Riley Russel, SCEA’s General Counsel: “Sony is glad to put this litigation behind us. Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers. We believe this settlement and the permanent injunction achieve this goal.”

The permanent injunction forbids Hotz from publishing any information regarding his PlayStation 3 hack. Hotz said that he never intended “to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier.” He is also relieved to have the whole thing behind him.

Care to take a guess? It has nothing to do with Final Fantasy or Pokémon (obviously). In fact, it has nothing to do with any of Sony’s flagship IPs. We’ll give you a hint: it’s fairly new to the PSN, which makes this even more amazing than it already is.

Still no idea? Alright here’s another clue: the plot is inextricably tied up with the notions of vengeance and rage. There are pigs, and there birds.

That’s right; not even the PSN is exempt from the madness that is Angry Birds.

People are easily confused between the two, because both use an unintelligible dialect.

Jack Tretton, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, recently shot his mouth off about the PlayStation’s biggest rivals: Microsoft and Nintendo. Speaking to CNN, Tretton likened the Nintendo DS to “a great babysitting tool”. Do you have a Nintendo DS and are you older than twenty? Well then, according to Tretton, you’re too old to have one.

That’s right, twenty-something-year-old, you should rather have a PSP, because that handheld is not meant for kids at all. If you are one of the 145 million people who bought a DS, then you’re wrong and you should totally be more like the 67 million who bought a PSP instead.

Tretton took the opportunity to big-up the PlayStation 3 and Sony in general. Granted, he is the CEO so that is sort of his job, but there must be a way to promote your own products without sounding so out of touch.

This man is clearly very excited for Rage. CAN YOU SEE ALL THE EXCITE?!

id Software’s released a new trailer for Rage (the game – not our awesome, lovely, tasty expo) that shows off a few of the shooty things with which you’re going to shoot dudes before they get the chance to shoot you with their own shooty things. It’s an impressively complex take on survival of the fittest, where the man with the biggest gun and/or sentry turret always comes out on top. Okay, so maybe it’s not all that complex, but holy crapballs does it look like an absolute blast. Also, there’s a super-sexy bladed boomerang of doom in there – and I must have one.

Rageis due for release this September, which automatically means that September wins 2011. Boomerang of Doom!

Registrations for the NGL Black Ops Easter Knockout Tournament are now open. The competition will take place online over the Easter weekend, and will be a knockout-style tournament. This is how the tournament will work …

If you’re anything like me, then you probably missed out on the first Crysis because you didn’t have a job that paid well enough to afford the ridiculously expensive PC hardware you would have needed to have a hope in hell of even running the game. I still don’t, in fact, and I’m sure I’m not the only one – which is a real pity, because it was without doubt an amazing-looking game with some very well though-out gameplay.

If you’re still licking your wounds from missing that boat, you’ll be pleased to know that the sequel, Crysis 2, is now available for the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as the PC. Those of us who aren’t inclined to spend thousands on a new motherboard and video card, tweaking driver settings and using registry hacks to unlock overclocking options and sealed off capabilities to squeeze a bit more juice of their rigs, can simply pop the game into our consoles and play it at its fullest on that platform.

In all honesty, when I saw this news crop up I had to suppress a “squeee”. And then any effort on my side was rendered pointless when I realised that the DLC on offer was really just the lame pre-order incentive stuff that retailers used to entice people back when the game launched.

Still, if you’re bitter about never getting the Red Dead Redemption pre-order DLC the first time, now is your chance to rectify that as all three items will be heading to the PSN and XBL on 12 April.

You’ll be able to pick up the Assassin’s Outfit (faster Dead Eye recharge time), the War Horse (fastest and strongest horse in the game) or the Golden Guns (earns you Fame faster) for a measly 80 MS Points or $0.99 (probably R10) each. Rockstar apologised for the delay in getting this DLC out for everyone and said that the same delay would not be the case for upcoming L.A. Noire pre-order DLC – a comment which we’re sure just pissed off a bunch of retailers, as it undermines their pre-order exclusivity.

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